The Many Of Me

First, I wish I could tell you all the resources I have used to form the understandings that I have about anger; but much of it has come through reading psychology books, reading the Bible with a focus on getting a more thorough and accurate understanding of what the Bible really tells us about anger, Christian radio broadcasts that focus on the topic of anger, and numerous counseling sessions with different counselors over the past few decades, as well as conversations with friends and family members through the years. It would be an impossible endeavor to try to sort out what specific understandings I got from any particular source. What I am reporting here is a conglomeration and condensation of what I now understand about anger and about my personal history. It has taken a huge amount of effort over a long period of time to sort out the false or misunderstandings from the currently arrived at understandings which are more accurate as affirmed by counselors and other resources.

There is a powerful paradox of emotions that result from the misunderstandings I got from my upbringing. I have felt extreme shame for feeling angry about injustices done to others as well as to us. Some of those injustices include incest and other forms of blatant abuse and manipulation that occurred throughout my lifetime. Many of the relationships which were abusive were with close family members, so I didn’t feel I had the freedom to extricate myself from the relationships that were destructive.

Anger is really a helpful and necessary emotion. It serves to protect and warn us when we are in danger. When it is acknowledged and allowed to do it’s job, anger dissipates quickly without much or any harm done to anyone. When it is ignored or denied, or alternatively when it is harbored and nurtured – permitted to fester deep inside, it can grow in intensity until it finally explodes and can do great harm.

In the case with our family, we were taught that anger was sinful with only one possible exception which was if it is expressed in defense of the church. The reason given for the exception was the example of Jesus clearing the temple shortly before His crucification. We grew up with this understanding. When we became angry for any other injustice done to us or to others, it was considered to be sinful.

That isn’t an accurate account of what the Bible teaches at all. There are numerous passages of Scripture that support God’s anger as well as mankind being angry about injustices done; but my father’s perspective and understanding were skewed by his own experiences. I’m fairly certain he would not still adhere to those beliefs about anger; but that was what he taught us and what he preached from the pulpit for all the years of my growing up.

I’m going to focus on a topic that has been one of great confusion to me for my entire life. Some of this I have learned from my siblings and some from my father plus what I have experienced myselves. I plan to make this the theme for the next few posts. Some of it may have been covered in previous posts; but I trust some of it will be new as well.

I suppose my issues with anger really stem back to before I was born. My father had a violent temper before I was born and for the first few years of my life. I don’t have very many personal memories of my father’s temper being out-of-control, but older siblings do. The first I became aware of it was when my father wrote a letter to my psychiatrist in which he raised the possibility that my need for psychiatric care now might be related to or stemmed from his explosive temper. In that letter he described an incident that happened when I was an infant. I had been crying for hours and was inconsolable. In a fit of anger he grabbed a pillow and covered my head with it, forcing me to stop crying. My memories of that trauma include a severe ear ache in my left ear; but of course my father had no way of knowing that was why I had been crying so long. When he realized what he had come extremely close to doing to me because of his anger, he made God and himself a promise to never loose control of his temper again. Anger became his number one enemy, and he remained determined to wipe it out of his life and the lives of his children from that time on. My older siblings and I remember images of Dad pacing the floor in extreme frustrations and yelling, “I’m not angry at you! I’m angry at me for being angry at you!!!” I remember my tendency to hold my breath in fear whenever he said those words.